Global Ethnography

Abstract

▪ Abstract Globalization poses a challenge to existing social scientific methods of inquiry and units of analysis by destabilizing the embeddedness of social relations in particular communities and places. Ethnographic sites are globalized by means of various external connections across multiple spatial scales and porous and contested boundaries. Global ethnographers must begin their analysis by seeking out “place-making projects” that seek to define new kinds of places, with new definitions of social relations and their boundaries. Existing ethnographic studies of global processes tend to cluster under one of three slices of globalization—global forces, connections, or imaginations—each defined by a different kind of place-making project. The extension of the site in time and space poses practical and conceptual problems for ethnographers, but also political ones. Nonetheless, by locating themselves firmly within the time and space of social actors “living the global,” ethnographers can reveal how global processes are collectively and politically constructed, demonstrating the variety of ways in which globalization is grounded in the local.

Mittendrin statt nur dabei: Ethnographie als Methodologie in der Humangeographie

“…Man könnte sie im klassischen Schema der Humangeographie ordnen und dabei zwei in der Kultur-und Sozialgeographie (Frers, Verne), einen in der Wirtschaftsgeographie und einen in der Politischen Geographie (Schurr) follow the people" erfordert auch von der Forscherin hohe Mobilität und die Fähigkeit sich auf unterschiedliche Kontexte einzustellen. Es kann aber auch im Projekt der globalen Ethnographie passieren, das sich -ähnlich wie bei Stefan Ouma -dafür interessiert, wie globale Prozesse sich in Lokalitäten niederschlagen (Gille undÓ Riain, 2002).…”

„Markets in the Making“: Zur Ethnographie alltäglicher Marktkonstruktionen in organisationalen Settings

“…Ethnographien der Vermarktlichung verquicken gewissermaßen das ethnographische Programm der " laboratory studies" mit dem was in Soziologie, Anthropologie und Geographie als " global ethnography" bezeichnet wird (Burawoy, 2000;Gille und Riain, 2002;Tsing, 2005), entledigen sich dabei jedoch gleichzeitig der strukturalistischen Untertöne, die insbesondere in der Burawoy'schen Lesart der " global ethnography" mitschwingen (Hart, 2004:97). Gewissermaßen geht es darum, Organisationen wie TFI als Labor bzw.…”

People, Place, and Time: How Structural Fieldwork Helps World-Systems Analysis

“…We suggest that field research offers the world-system perspective exactly the opposite: in the work we are highlighting, authors instead show how structure is located in people's lives, and often how people struggle to make change. Gille and Ó'Riain (2002), following Burawoy, suggest that one of the questions that globalization poses for ethnographic study is 'where is the there of our interests?' Locale is an important question, to be sure, but structural fieldwork looks also at new and different systems and spatial arrangements, while focusing largely on power relationships.…”